blog of Elder Rob Weatherford
serving in the Mexico Veracruz Mission
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Monday, August 31, 2015

2015-8-31 Re: oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my darlin' elder-boy

{note: some of this letter is in answer to the family's letters, so I left out that part. :) The rest is in answer to my question about practice before the big event!}

As for practice beforehand... not really. As far as the
hymns, we just sang Praise to the Man and Called to Serve, so I didn't really
need to practice those two that much. And I had about 45 minutes of playing
prelude in front of the entire mission to warm up before Elder Cristofferson
showed up, so that was fine. As for the song, however... that was really the
Spirit, I'm pretty sure. The two missionaries that sang, Elder Larsen and Elder
Castañeda, wanted to do a vocal arrangement of "Because I Have Been Given
Much," but the thing is, they didn't have any music. I got bussed out a
day early to be able to practice with them (I had no information whatsoever
beforehand), but we only ended up getting about an hour and a half. They had a
CD with the arrangement they wanted to do, but it was all guitar and vocals,
with a lot of changes from the original hymn. We talked it out, and we just
practiced with me playing the hymn normally. But they asked for something a
little cooler, so I essentially ended up making up an accompaniment in less
than an hour that we performed the next day in front of an apostle without
another practice session. So that was something a little new for me. Dad knows
that I haven't written anything before, let alone on the fly like that. So it
was pretty much the Spirit, because God didn't want bad music for Elder
Cristofferson. I'm not saying it was a masterpiece of arranging or anything,
just mostly working with arpeggios of the chords and a steady ripple (quick
notes, not sure what to call it) rhythm, but I think it turned out decently.
They messed up more than I did! Hehe... But seriously, it ended up really well,
I think.

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To send Rob a message, you may email him at robert.weatherford@myldsmail.net :) And here is the mission address if you want to send a package or something good like that!Elder Rob WeatherfordMexico Veracruz MissionCalle Altamirano #27Entre 1 de Mayo y CarranzaCol. Flores MagónVeracruz, Ver 91700México